In 2011, then-President Dmitry Medvedev announced plans to deploy Iskander missiles in Russia’s westernmost Kaliningrad Region, to counter the threat posed by the US plans to deploy missile defense elements in Europe. NATO and the United States insist that the shield would defend NATO members against missiles from North Korea and Iran and would not be directed at Russia.

Russia proposed a joint missile defense system, an idea that many experts both at home and abroad dismiss as unviable and unrealistic. Then it demanded “legally binding guarantees” that US/NATO missiles would not be aimed at Russia. Since Moscow’s proposal received a lukewarm response in the West, Russia has been warning of unspecified low-cost “asymmetric measures” to counter the future Western missile defense system.